3 Install - Build and Installation guide for perl5.
7 The basic steps to build and install perl5 are:
15 Each of these is explained in further detail below.
19 =head1 Start with a Fresh Distribution.
21 The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh file. If
22 you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you change
23 systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if you are
24 experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably I<not>
25 re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or rename it, e.g.
27 mv config.sh config.sh.old
33 Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
34 things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
35 you about. To accept the default, just press C<RETURN>. The default
38 After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
39 F<*.SH> files and offer to run B<make depend>.
41 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run B<Configure -h>
42 to get a listing. To compile with gcc, for example, you can run
46 This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or another alternative
47 compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
49 If you want to use your old config.sh but override some of the items
50 with command line options, you need to use B<Configure -O>.
52 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
57 By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
58 /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. You can specify a different 'prefix' for
59 the default installation directory, when Configure prompts you or by
60 using the Configure command line option -Dprefix='/some/directory',
63 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
65 If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the directories
66 are simplified. For example, if you use prefix=/opt/perl,
67 then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
68 /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
70 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading, if
71 your system supports it. If you want to force perl to be compiled
72 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or by
73 using the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
75 =head2 GNU-style configure
77 If you prefer the GNU-style B<configure> command line interface, you can
78 use the supplied B<configure> command, e.g.
82 The B<configure> script emulates several of the more common configure
89 Cross compiling is currently not supported.
91 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
93 Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including
94 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For each extension, if
95 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
96 automatically include that extension. The gdbm and db libraries
97 are B<not> included with perl. See the library documentation for
98 how to obtain the libraries.
100 I<Note:> If your database header (.h) files are not in a
101 directory normally searched by your C compiler, then you will need to
102 include the appropriate B<-I/your/directory> option when prompted by
103 Configure. If your database library (.a) files are not in a directory
104 normally searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to
105 include the appropriate B<-L/your/directory> option when prompted by
106 Configure. See the examples below.
112 =item gdbm in /usr/local.
114 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
115 GDBM_File extension. This examples assumes you have F<gdbm.h>
116 installed in F</usr/local/include/gdbm.h> and F<libgdbm.a> installed in
117 F</usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a>. Configure should figure all the
118 necessary steps out automatically.
120 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
121 your C compiler, you should include C<-I/usr/local/include>.
123 When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
126 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
127 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
130 Again, this should all happen automatically. If you want to accept the
131 defaults for all the questions and have Configure print out only terse
132 messages, then you can just run
136 and Configure should include the GDBM_File extension automatically.
138 This should actually work if you have gdbm installed in any of
139 (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu, /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
141 =item gdbm in /usr/you
143 Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/,
144 but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
145 have F</usr/you/include/gdbm.h> and F</usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a>. You
146 still have to add B<-I/usr/you/include> to cc flags, but you have to take
147 an extra step to help Configure find F<libgdbm.a>. Specifically, when
148 Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
149 F</usr/you/lib> to the list.
151 It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
155 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
156 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
158 C<locincpth> is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
159 Configure will automatically add the appropriate B<-I> directives.
161 C<loclibpth> is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
162 Configure will automatically add the appropriate B<-L> directives. If
163 you have some libraries under F</usr/local/> and others under
164 F</usr/you>, then you have to include both, namely
167 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
168 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
172 =head2 Installation Directories.
174 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
175 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the
176 installation questions are near the beginning of Configure.
178 By default, Configure uses the following directories for
179 library files (archname is a string like sun4-sunos, determined
182 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.002
183 /usr/local/lib/perl5/
184 /usr/local/lib/site_perl/archname
185 /usr/local/lib/site_perl
187 and the following directories for manual pages:
190 /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3
192 (Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
193 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
194 instead.) The module man pages are stuck in that strange spot so that
195 they don't collide with other man pages stored in /usr/local/man/man3,
196 and so that Perl's man pages don't hide system man pages. On some
197 systems, B<man less> would end up calling up Perl's less.pm module man
198 page, rather than the B<less> program.
200 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
201 directory structure is simplified. For example, if you Configure
202 with -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the defaults are
204 /opt/perl/lib/archname/5.002
206 /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/archname
207 /opt/perl/lib/site_perl
212 The perl executable will search the libraries in the order given
215 The directories site_perl and site_perl/archname are empty, but are
216 intended to be used for installing local or site-wide extensions. Perl
217 will automatically look in these directories. Previously, most sites
218 just put their local extensions in with the standard distribution.
220 In order to support using things like #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.002 after
221 a later version is released, architecture-dependent libraries are
222 stored in a version-specific directory, such as
223 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.002/. In 5.000 and 5.001, these files
224 were just stored in /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/. If you will not be
225 using 5.001 binaries, you can delete the standard extensions from the
226 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/ directory. Locally-added extensions can
227 be moved to the site_perl and site_perl/archname directories.
229 Again, these are just the defaults, and can be changed as you run
232 =head2 Changing the installation directory
234 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
235 associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it
236 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
237 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
238 However, sites that use software such as B<depot> to manage software
239 packages may also wish to install perl into a different directory and
240 use that management software to move perl to its final destination.
241 This section describes how to do this. Someday, Configure may support
242 an option C<-Dinstallprefix=/foo> to simplify this.
244 Suppose you want to install perl under the F</tmp/perl5> directory.
245 You can edit F<config.sh> and change all the install* variables to
246 point to F</tmp/perl5> instead of F</usr/local/wherever>. You could
247 also set them all from the Configure command line. Or, you can
248 automate this process by placing the following lines in a file
249 F<config.over> B<before> you run Configure (replace /tmp/perl5 by a
250 directory of your choice):
252 installprefix=/tmp/perl5
253 test -d $installprefix || mkdir $installprefix
254 test -d $installprefix/bin || mkdir $installprefix/bin
255 installarchlib=`echo $installarchlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
256 installbin=`echo $installbin | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
257 installman1dir=`echo $installman1dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
258 installman3dir=`echo $installman3dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
259 installprivlib=`echo $installprivlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
260 installscript=`echo $installscript | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
261 installsitelib=`echo $installsitelib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
262 installsitearch=`echo $installsitearch | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
264 Then, you can Configure and install in the usual way:
271 =head2 Creating an installable tar archive
273 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is
274 convenient to compile it once and create an archive that can be
275 installed on multiple systems. Here's one way to do that:
277 # Set up config.over to install perl into a different directory,
278 # e.g. /tmp/perl5 (see previous part).
284 tar cvf ../perl5-archive.tar .
285 # Then, on each machine where you want to install perl,
286 cd /usr/local # Or wherever you specified as $prefix
287 tar xvf perl5-archive.tar
289 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
293 =item Running Configure Interactively
295 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
296 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
299 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
300 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler &
301 flags) you can type '&-d' at the next Configure prompt and Configure
302 will use the defaults from then on.
304 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
305 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
306 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
310 The perl distribution includes a number of system-specific hints files
311 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
312 will offer to use that hint file.
314 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
315 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint
316 file for further information. See F<hints/solaris_2.sh> for an
319 =item Changing Compilers
321 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
322 probably I<not> re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
323 rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old. Then rerun Configure
324 with the options you want to use.
326 This is a common source of problems. If you change from B<cc> to
327 B<gcc>, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
329 =item Propagating your changes
331 If you later make any changes to F<config.sh>, you should propagate
332 them to all the .SH files by running B<sh Configure -S>.
336 You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride Configure's
337 guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just before config.sh
338 is created. You have to be careful with this, however, as Configure
339 does no checking that your changes make sense.
343 Many of the system dependencies are contained in F<config.h>.
344 F<Configure> builds F<config.h> by running the F<config_h.SH> script.
345 The values for the variables are taken from F<config.sh>.
347 If there are any problems, you can edit F<config.h> directly. Beware,
348 though, that the next time you run B<Configure>, your changes will be
353 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
354 line, they can be made in F<cflags.SH>. For instance, to turn off the
355 optimizer on F<toke.c>, find the line in the switch structure for
356 F<toke.c> and put the command C<optimize='-g'> before the C<;;>. You
357 can also edit F<cflags> directly, but beware that your changes will be
358 lost the next time you run B<Configure>.
360 To change the C flags for all the files, edit F<config.sh>
361 and change either C<$ccflags> or C<$optimize>,
362 and then re-run B<sh Configure -S ; make depend>.
366 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file config_H to
367 config.h and edit the config.h to reflect your system's peculiarities.
368 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
375 This will look for all the includes.
376 The output is stored in F<makefile>. The only difference between
377 F<Makefile> and F<makefile> is the dependencies at the bottom of
378 F<makefile>. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
379 F<makefile>, not F<Makefile> since the Unix B<make> command reads
382 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
387 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
389 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
395 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
396 for further tips and information.
400 If you can't compile successfully, try adding a C<-DCRIPPLED_CC> flag.
401 (Just because you get no errors doesn't mean it compiled right!)
402 This simplifies some complicated expressions for compilers that
403 get indigestion easily. If that has no effect, try turning off
404 optimization. If you have missing routines, you probably need to
405 add some library or other, or you need to undefine some feature that
406 Configure thought was there but is defective or incomplete.
410 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files without
411 some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or allocate larger
412 internal tables. You can customize the switches for each file in
413 F<cflags>. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
414 F<makefile> since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
419 If you can successfully build F<miniperl>, but the process crashes
420 during the building of extensions, you should run
424 to test your version of miniperl.
428 Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:
430 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
432 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
434 UTS may need one or more of B<-DCRIPPLED_CC>, B<-K> or B<-g>, and undef LSTAT.
436 If you get syntax errors on '(', try -DCRIPPLED_CC.
438 Machines with half-implemented dbm routines will need to #undef I_ODBM
440 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
441 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
443 If you get duplicates upon linking for malloc et al, say -DHIDEMYMALLOC.
445 If you get duplicate function definitions (a perl function has the
446 same name as another function on your system) try -DEMBED.
448 If you get varags problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
449 correctly. When using gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define'
450 and i_varags='undef' in config.sh. The problem is usually solved
451 by running fixincludes correctly.
453 If you wish to use dynamic loading on SunOS or Solaris, and you
454 have GNU as and GNU ld installed, you may need to add B<-B/bin/> to
455 your $ccflags and $ldflags so that the system's versions of as
458 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
459 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. Perl should build
460 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
461 of your local set-up.
467 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If it
468 doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went wrong. See the
469 file F<t/README> in the F<t> subdirectory. Note that you can't run it
470 in background if this disables opening of /dev/tty. If B<make test>
471 bombs out, just B<cd> to the F<t> directory and run B<TEST> by hand
472 to see if it makes any difference.
473 If individual tests bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
477 =head1 INSTALLING PERL5
481 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
482 B<Configure>; by default this is F</usr/local/bin>. It will also try
483 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
484 page, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
485 are not root, you must own the directories in question and you should
486 ignore any messages about chown not working.
488 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
489 anything, you can run
491 ./perl installperl -n
494 B<make install> will install the following:
497 perl5.nnn where nnn is the current release number. This
498 will be a link to perl.
500 sperl5.nnn If you requested setuid emulation.
501 a2p awk-to-perl translator
502 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
504 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
505 s2p sed-to-perl translator
506 find2perl find-to-perl translator
507 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
508 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
509 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
510 pod2latex, and to other useful formats.
513 library files in $privlib and $archlib specified to
514 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
515 man pages in the location specified to Configure, usually
516 something like /usr/local/man/man1.
517 module in the location specified to Configure, usually
518 man pages under /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3.
519 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
521 Installperl will also create the library directories $siteperl and
522 $sitearch listed in config.sh. Usually, these are something like
523 /usr/local/lib/site_perl/
524 /usr/local/lib/site_perl/$archname
525 where $archname is something like sun4-sunos. These directories
526 will be used for installing extensions.
528 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl.a library are also
529 installed under $archlib so that any user may later build new
530 extensions even if the Perl source is no longer available.
532 The libperl.a library is only needed for building new
533 extensions and linking them statically into a new perl executable.
534 If you will not be doing that, then you may safely delete
535 $archlib/libperl.a after perl is installed.
537 make install may also offer to install perl in a "standard" location.
539 Most of the documentation in the pod/ directory is also available
540 in HTML and LaTeX format. Type
542 cd pod; make html; cd ..
544 to generate the html versions, and
546 cd pod; make tex; cd ..
548 to generate the LaTeX versions.
550 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5.
552 You can safely install the current version of perl5 and still run
553 scripts under the old binaries. Instead of starting your script with
554 #!/usr/local/bin/perl, just start it with #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.001
555 (or whatever version you want to run.)
557 The architecture-dependent files are stored in a version-specific
558 directory (such as F</usr/local/lib/perl5/sun4-sunos/5.002>) so that
559 they are still accessible. I<Note:> perl5.000 and perl5.001 did not
560 put their architecture-dependent libraries in a version-specific
561 directory. They are simply in F</usr/local/lib/perl5/$archname>. If
562 you will not be using 5.000 or 5.001, you may safely remove those
565 The standard library files in F</usr/local/lib/perl5>
566 should be useable by all versions of perl5.
568 Most extensions will not need to be recompiled to use with a newer
569 version of perl. If you do run into problems, and you want to continue
570 to use the old version of perl along with your extension, simply move
571 those extension files to the appropriate version directory, such as
572 F</usr/local/lib/perl/archname/5.002>. Then perl5.002 will find your
573 files in the 5.002 directory, and newer versions of perl will find your
574 newer extension in the site_perl directory.
576 =head1 Coexistence with perl4
578 You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.
580 By default, the perl5 libraries go into F</usr/local/lib/perl5/>, so
581 they don't override the perl4 libraries in F</usr/local/lib/perl/>.
583 In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named
584 F<perl4.036>. That will not be touched by the perl5 installation
585 process. Most perl4 scripts should run just fine under perl5.
586 However, if you have any scripts that require perl4, you can replace
587 the C<#!> line at the top of them by C<#!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036>
588 (or whatever the appropriate pathname is).
592 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation is
593 in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
594 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
595 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied B<perldoc> script. This
596 is sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
600 Andy Dougherty <doughera@lafcol.lafayette.edu>, borrowing I<very> heavily
601 from the original README by Larry Wall.